This will be a full fuse, cockpit will be laminated depron sanded to shape and nose will be a two angle piece to give it an approximate shape, because I'm too lazy to do a multi piece compound curve and am trying to keep it simple. The rear oms will be a tapered half round to give an approximate look, but is not meant to be an absolutely correct scale profile.

The only carbon is the wing spar 1/8" carbon tube, and 1/8" carbon strip to stiffen the vertical tail.

I added formers to aid in getting the payload bay shape and also added depron strips to help locate the fuse sides in place.

I'm using some rocket nose cones cut off and glued on to the back as placeholders for nozzles till I find something the right size or make something better.

Made more progress last night, finished the other side. I was really not happy with the cockpit so I re-worked it using four pieces of 3mm depron, two sides, a wraparound, and a cap. It looks much better. I also discovered that the 3-view I had used was really crappy, and I reworked the OMS rear end a bit.

I also did some of the markings using trim monokote and will only need to paint the bottom flat black, and use a flat overspray over the monokote.

****Reflections and Notes******

I'm sort of torn on this model. The Shuttle never really grabbed me and that's why I didn't do one before. On this particular model, my bad habbit of liking to do things freehand for the most part, sort of caught up with me and I had a few things with small misalignment, nothing major, but I notice them...

I like to keep things simple and on this model, there are some fundamental shapes that are pretty characteristic and if not done right, it just looks stupid. I'm also not a great carver, so hacking out shapes out of foam isn't my bag. I think I sort of salvaged the cockpit, and the OMS came out OK but there are several other ways to approximate the OMS and mine is just one way. Point is, don't hate me because I didn't shape things a certain way, I made a tradeoff between simplicity of parts, difficulty of assembly and look. In some cases I think it works, in some cases, well, you can make up your own mind.

If I do post plans, I think I'm going to leave out the cockpit details and leave it up to the user to implement. You could just carve a block to shape and insert it into the fuse cutout for the cockpit.

I also wanted to keep the wing flat bottom, so the nose shape doesn't round up as much as scale, again, if you want to hack off the nose and carve a block to the correct shape, that would work as well.

In addition, I wanted to keep the motor thrust line right along the wing, so the motor is mounted low. In order to support the motor mount, I had to extend the OMS and rear end a bit so that the rear former would support the mount. It also allows the rear mud flap outline to exist but not be burned off by the motor exhaust. So, if looking from the top or side, the OMS and rear end is longer than scale and the vertical tail is as well to keep the relative proportions the same.

So, it isn't scale, but it does look like a shuttle and hopefully will quack(fly) like a shuttle or better

On the plus side it did give me a chance to play around with forming depron around curved formers so I learned a bit about that.

Stay tuned for further updates to the finishing/markings and eventually to a flight review. I did complete the forward and rearward CG glides so I think those are bracketed correctly.

Painted the nose gray tonight as well as doing a few more extra markings. Did the final weigh and it is 13.5 oz with loaded motor. Also just broke down and rolled some SSME nozzles out of 3mm depron, tracing a plate as a form, and a glass as the inside radius, cutting out half of it, and making a tab out of 3mm as well and gluing them together, worked fine.

I decided that since this wasn't an exact model, I didn't want to name it after an existing (or former shuttle) Too morbid. So I picked "Intrepid", another ship name, that invokes the same sort of feeling as the "endeavor", my other choice would have been Reliant...

Update 12/03/2011, 2 successful test flights today. A bit of head wind prevented a super-high boost, and the first flight I had too much up trim for post boost glide, but CG was perfect. It pitched toward the back on initial boost off the rod, I think due to the head wind, but a gentle stick command pitched it right back vertical and was not a problem. My daughter over-reacted a bit during the video and it makes it look worse than it was.

Hi, that is funny, I didn't even look at your construction technique ahead of time....

My boost CG is a bit forward of the curve where the wings change angle, and the burnout cg is ahead of that, other than a good amount of uptrim for glide, it doesn't seem adversely affected. I might be able to move it back, but it works and I don't want to kill it.

BTW

My X-37 didn't work out so well, so I chopped off the back end and the wings, reshaped the front, added a new rear former, a tail and am almost done turning it into a Buran, almost the same size as the shuttle, but an ounce lighter and a slightly bigger wing area. I was able to push the mount mount more forward on the Buran. I made a new wing, glued it to the bottom of the original fuse after cutting lightening holes and voila. I think it will allow me to round the front more as well. So basically I salvaged the rounded fuse portion that I worked so hard on and that came out nicely.